A Review of Ministry of Health’s Experience on Institutionalization of Health Technology Assessment in Turkey

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 31 - 42, 25.12.2019

Elife Dilmaç , Gülcan Tecirli , Adile Acar , Dilek Aydoğan , İlker L. Sabuncuoğlu , Mustafa Kilic , Olgun Sener , Bilgehan Karadayı

Abstract

Evidence-based health
policies are indispensable for the health systems to achieve their objectives
and sustainability. In particular, the importance and necessity of developing evidence-based
health policies have increased due to reasons such as aging population, the
increase in the innovation of medical technologies and rapidly increasing
costs. There are different tools used to generate evidence-based health
policies, one of the most powerful of which is the health technology assessment
(HTA). The method is gaining importance and its usage becomes widespread in the
world. Turkey has also launched some initiatives to institutionalize HTA in
2012. The first important step has taken with the establishment of the
Department of Health Technology Assessment under the General Directorate of
Health Research (GDHR) of Ministry of Health. However, expectations regarding
the institutionalization of the HTA in Turkey have not fully met. In this
study, we aim (1) to share our experience on the activities carried out in the
institutionalization process of HTA in Ministry of Health of Turkey and (2) to
help policy makers to establish more powerful HTA structure by identifying
encountered problems and suggested solutions.  

Keywords

Institutionalization, Health Technology Assessment, Health Policy, Turkey, Turkey

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